1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to graphical user interface elements and more particularly to a tool-tip.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typical tool-tips are miniaturized graphical elements superimposed over an interface element in a user interface so as to provide supplemental information to one interacting with the user interface. Tool-tips can range from simple textual data, to graphical images. Tool-tips initially were developed to provide an enhanced explanation of the functionality of an underlying button in a tool box. Tool-tips had become necessary primarily because the graphical imagery in the button had become so complex as to lose its association with the underlying functionality of the button. Consequently, textual tool-tips were provided in order to “explain” the underlying functionality of the button in ordinary conversational language.
In the conventional tool-tip system, a tool-tip can become activated upon the occurrence of a user interface event such as a mouse-over event associated with a particular user interface elements such as a button or a menu item. While the tool-tip may not become activated immediately, the tool-tip can become activated in those circumstances where the mouse pointer giving rise to the mouse-over event does not move beyond the boundaries of the user interface element. To that end, the hesitancy of the mouse pointer can be treated as an indication that the user does not recognize the consequence of selecting the user interface element and will require additional information regarding the functionality of the user interface element.
Importantly, tool-tips have been limited to providing supplemental information regarding the functionality of an underlying user interface element. Such user interface elements typically include menu items and tool bar buttons. Tool-tips also have been used to provide a pop-up textual description of non-textual content such as an image. Specifically, upon occurrence of a mouse-over event in proximity to an image, a tool-tip can provide a textual explanation of the image. Still, while tool-tips have the inherent potential to be applied to many user interface problems, tool-tips have not been applied to problems falling outside of the realm of “explaining” elements of a user interface.
Screen capturing technology has been an important part of computing technology for many years. Screen capturing specifically refers to the generation of a stored image of a computer screen, much akin to a “snap shot”. Initially, screen capturing technology had been applied to computer education and training. In particular, screen capturing had become an indispensable element of creating application training manuals so that the reader could associate textual, written instructions within an application instruction manual to the desired result presented on the computer screen.
More recently, screen capturing technology has been used to transform the user interface of a legacy application to a current application. For instance, the WebSphere™ Host Access Transformation Server (HATS™), manufactured by International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., United States, provides a set of comprehensive tools for extending legacy applications such as those hosted within the 3270 and 5250 operating environments into the World Wide Web (Web). To facilitate the transformation of a mainframe or midrange hosted application to a Web-based application, screen captures of the host application can be processed into Web screens dynamically with little or no user intervention.
Within transformation applications such as HATS, an integrated development environment can provide the transformation developer with resources to customize the resulting Web-based application. As part of the integrated development environment, a directory of screen captured images of the legacy application can be provided for selection by the developer. Once a particular screen captured image has been selected, the screen captured image can be loaded and the developer can interact with the loaded screen captured image in order to customize the operation of the display in the Web-based application.
Screen captured images, like other traditional computer images, can require intense computing resources in order to load the particular screen captured image. Consequently, it can be disadvantageous to load a particular screen captured image unless the developer has specific intent to interact with the particular screen captured image. Where the screen captured images have been stored using a less than descriptive naming convention, however, it can be difficult to identify the particular screen captured image with which a developer is desirous of interaction. Accordingly, notwithstanding the waste of computing resources, the developer will be compelled to load each screen captured image in order to identify the desired particular screen captured image.